Mellow yellow

Use yellow, the colour of confidence and happiness, to brighten your garden borders this summer, says Hazel Sillver, as she describes how to use these golden tones

- Hazel Sillver

AFTER enduring the ups and downs of the pandemic, many of us crave cheering colour in our gardens – and yellow is one of the best. The word yellow descends from the Indo-European root ghel, meaning bright and shining. Yellow represents happiness, and most children name it as their favorite colour. It is also the motivating hue of focus, as well as indomitable confidence. And in Asia, it is regarded as sacred – so much so that at one time in China, only the emperor was allowed to wear it.

Relaxing quality

In the garden, yellow is often eschewed because it can dominate the scene. But when used well, it is indispensable for its joyful glow. Yellow also has a relaxing quality to it: the honey, ochre and primrose corners of its palette, especially, exude mellow warmth.

In his book Colour for Adventurous Lloyd is enthusiastic about ‘cheerful, stimulating yellow’, which he used a lot in his garden, Great Dixter in East Sussex. “The colour of sunlight, it lifts the spirits,” he wrote. “A little touch of bright yellow is often all that is needed for effect.” Ironically, the iconic canary-yellow towers of Verbascum olympicum that soar gloriously out of the Dixter borders like immense yellow candles are more than “a little touch”. Nor did Lloyd and his head gardener, Fergus Garrett, go easy with the bright-yellow corn marigolds (Glebionis segetum) in their Exotic Garden, and the result is a wonderful riot of colour, when the marigolds bloom alongside the reds, purples and oranges of cannas, dahlias and verbenas.

Softer yellow tones